


世界の約束

by ver_sailles



Category: Howl no Ugoku Shiro | Howl's Moving Castle, Yuri!!! on Ice (Anime)
Genre: Howl's Moving Castle AU, M/M, angst but not really, because this series deserves it, victor as howl, yuuri as sophie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-12-14
Updated: 2016-12-14
Packaged: 2018-09-08 11:37:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,190
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8843227
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ver_sailles/pseuds/ver_sailles
Summary: Victor sometimes forgets he is human and Yuuri is not always there to remind him.





	

Victor has never known love. 

 

He has only known pity, reflecting itself in the form of a star leaving a trail of fire across the sky, casting shadows on the lines of his adolescent face. He remembers reaching out for it, his hands holding starlight and his mouth full of flames. _I'll give you my heart, so you can live._

 

He has known many things, things that can be mistaken for love (like pleasure and privilege and other petty feelings provoked by the admiration of others). But never love. Of course, how could a boy without a heart even begin to understand the concept of love, let alone feel it?

 

But when Victor hears a cry in the distance, with a flame in his hands and stars falling to their deaths all around him-

 

_“Find me in the future!”_

 

He sees a glimpse of a boy with raven hair and a dog at his feet and the minute he turns his head to get a better look, they were gone in a second, swallowed by the ground.

 

No, he didn't know love, even then, when the apparition of a boy came to him only to disappear. But he felt something close.

 

(And he thought he rather liked it.)

 

\---

 

Many years after, he spies him from a rooftop in the town village. His raven hair is stark against the dull pavement of the alley he pretends he isn't lost in, a charming sunhat in his hands, and when Victor first sees him, he's immediately entranced. A few looming soldiers corner him into the side of the pathway, and Victor has no choice _but_ to save this damsel of a boy.

 

“I was looking everywhere for you,” Victor says to the him, loud enough for the soldiers to back off, true enough for Victor to feel satisfaction at coming up with it on the spot. The bespectacled boy turns pink at his words and Victor thinks for a moment, _No, this can't be the same person all those years ago._

 

He tells Victor he's headed to the town bakery and he urges the boy to keep calm as he hears footsteps quickening their pace behind them. Suliman’s henchmen are quick to pounce, chasing and cornering them until Victor closes his eyes and puts his arms around the boy, lifting them up until they touch the clouds. It's no secret that the boy in his arms has known nothing of magic until now, with the telltale widening of his eyes and his mouth hanging slightly open, the whole of the town underneath his feet. 

 

_Breathtaking, isn't it?_

 

Victor watches him walk on air beside him, slowly, steadily, guiding the boy and taking his hands in his. “You're a natural,” Victor whispers into his ear. Because it's true. 

 

When they float down to the bakery balcony, Victor makes sure to warn him to take care before bidding him goodbye and taking off in the most dramatic exit in the history of dramatic exits.

 

And when the same boy shows up at his castle the next day, wearing the aging face of an old man and the smell of a curse lingering about him, Victor finds himself mistaken. _Of course it's him, it has to be him._

 

It's a wonderful feeling, being wrong, almost like being in love. Almost. It pokes and prods at him and makes him ask, “And what’s your name, my dear,” when he already knows, already memorized the sound of it many years ago.

 

“Yuuri,” the boy says, quietly. Carefully. Like he’s not sure if he said the right thing. “I'm your new housekeeper.”

 

Later, when Victor erases the burn marks on the table leftover from an ill placed incantation, he knows he could never even try to break such a complex spell. It's the Witch of the Waste’s work, after all.

 

But he could try to _rewrite_ it.

 

\---

 

 _He doesn't belong here, you know that,_ the other Yuri, the fire demon, says to him one night, embers crackling and ash flying everywhere. _Get him out._

 

“Don't be like that, he hasn't done anything wrong,” Victor replies. He doesn't say, _I can't, you know I can't, not when there's not much time left,_ but the meaning is there and he watches the flames in front of his face die down a little bit in grim silence.

 

“Besides,” Victor continues in a lighter tone, “you're only mad because he bullied you into cooking bacon.”

 

 _And how close I was to burning it, indeed,_ Yuri sneers. Victor smiles genuinely for the first time in months.

 

Yuri, despite being hard edged and hot tempered, had always been there for him. He had been ungrateful when he was first demoted from _falling star deity_ to _fireplace castle demon_ , spitting embers at Victor and threatening to _run this damned castle to the ground, I don't care if you gave me your bloody heart._

 

Over the years, the two of them grew together, and learned to be tolerant of the other in their own ways. Slowly but steadily, Yuri’s behavior toward Victor grew to be less sputtering hostility, and more exasperated fondness more than anything, showing in the telltale soft glow he always radiated when he knew Victor needed someone to talk to.

 

He was there when Victor showed up some nights with a solemn face and silver feathers lining his body and talons protruding from his feet. He was there when lover after countless lover showed up, with young eyes and pretty (always pretty) faces. He was there when Victor sometimes put a hand to his chest (where a heart should be, but isn't) instead of his stomach and says, _I'm hungry. So very hungry._

 

Demons were never meant to have hearts. Humans were much the opposite. Victor knows Yuri could never understand the numbing emptiness that night in the garden had left him with, and he never expects him to. But at least he was there.

 

It was just that these days, simply being there just wasn't enough.

 

“Oh, by the way,” Victor says. “It's awfully confusing living with two Yuri’s, I hope you know that. I'm going to have to start calling you Yurio from now on, instead.”

 

The fire demon is (unsurprisingly) less than thrilled.

 

\---

 

Six nights have passed since Yuuri’s arrival, and Victor shows up at the door to his own castle, head bowed low and eyes downcast. Yurio takes one look at his singed feathers and is back to sputtering flecks of angry embers all over the new clean floor.

 

 _You look like shit,_ he says and Victor only nods before flopping onto a chair in front of the fireplace. A restlessness settles into his bones, however aching, and he watches Yurio crackle on until he feels like he can finally stand up.

 

Later, he peeks behind a curtain and watches. Yuuri is there, sleeping, with a youth’s face instead of an old, leathered one, black eyelashes fluttering on high cheekbones. He's beautiful.

 

Victor lets go of the curtain and finds himself to be calmer than he was moments ago.

 

It’s a wonderful feeling. Almost like being in love.

 

 _You’re such a creeper_ , Yurio tells him when he settles back into his chair, feathers finally returning to skin.

 

Victor smiles and it hurts, hurts, hurts.

 

\---

 

“Do you know what they say about me?” Victor says in that charming way of his that never fails to make Kingsbury girls swoon. It's a sunny day, the flowers swaying in a gentle breeze like they're dancing.

 

Yuuri cocks his head to the side and laughs, “You mean where they say all that nonsense about you eating hearts?” 

 

“Yes,” Victor nods. “Do you believe them?”

 

“Why? Are you going to eat mine?” Yuuri says this with such boyish naivety that Victor almost says, _Oh, dear, but you don't know how easy it would be,_ until he sees Yuuri's face shift into something young and pretty (always pretty) when he grins and says, “It's already yours.”

 

If Victor had a heart, it would be beating in time with war drums right about now. 

 

\---

 

He was kidding. He had to be, right? 

 

Sure, many others before him had given their hearts to Victor in their free will, joviant smiles saying, _You're going to give it back, right?_

 

Victor never does.

 

But Yuuri- Yuuri was _different_. He knew better than to trust lonely, heartless wizards, using their magic for their own amusement rather than good intentions. At least, Victor had trusted that he did. Yuuri was headstrong, learning to be confident in his own way, taking the curse placed on him and controlling it under steady, sure hands. Surely, he knew better than to bare his heart so foolishly-

 

But, _oh._ Oh, he was willing to.

 

That much was obvious.

 

Victor wouldn't mind doing the same. And that _scares_ him. Even more than the Witch of the Waste. Even more than the fact that on some nights, he stares at his own reflection in the mirror, feathers lining the sides of his face, and momentarily forgets who he is. _What_ he is. _What am I, really?_

 

Yuuri would tell him, “I know what you are,” and in all his seriousness, Victor would believe him. Because he was Yuuri. And Yuuri, who walked on air with him as if he naturally did so everyday, who sees the good in Yurio despite the demon’s obvious wariness towards the boy, who loves hats and cleaning and conquering Victor's filthy castle with a broom in one hand and a rag in the other-

 

Yuuri was Yuuri and Victor would gladly, wholeheartedly believe anything that happened to come out of the boy’s mouth. 

 

_A dashing young man? A conniving old wizard? Someone who has no business peering into your bed chambers to watch you sleep at night?_

 

“You're a boy who loves the stars,” Yuuri would say. “A boy full of magic and wonder. A boy who never fails to surprise me.”

 

And Victor would smile, because Yuuri always knew what to say.

 

He shows him the garden, where he had first met Yuuri (though Victor knew if he were to say anything about their first encounter to him, he would only get bewildered looks and raised eyebrows in response), and talks about the future to him, like how he can sell the flowers here and set up another shop in Porthaven. 

 

“Stop,” Yuuri tells him suddenly, a frown gracing his features. “It's...you're scaring me. I have this weird feeling you're going to leave.”

 

Victor stops, because Yuuri tells him to, and pauses to think, finger tapping his chin. “I'm sorry, I didn't think it would seem like that.”

 

“Victor, tell me what's going on,” Yuuri urges as he picks a flower from its stem and places it gently behind Victor's ear in a way that leaves the older boy breathless. “Please. I don't care if you're a monster.” 

 

Victor stares into twin pools of pure emotion and he is heavy with the weight of it all. He stays silent.

 

Later that night, Yuuri finds him in a worse state than he usually is, feathers taking up most of his body and making his face almost unrecognizable. It hurts, hurts, hurts. Victor tells him to go away.

 

“Don't worry,” Yuuri says, silent tears trailing from determined, young eyes as silver feathers fall into his hands. “I'll fix this.” Victor wants to believe him, has been wanting to believe him ever since he showed up all those years ago-

 

Something dull and ugly and dark makes him say, “You? You can't even break your own spell.” And he knows it's selfish and petty but he’d be lying if he said he felt anything but a cold hollowness right then, and seeing the hurt flash in Yuuri's young, pretty eyes brings him closer to feeling just a little bit human again. He doesn't want it to work, but it does. Oh, it does.

 

“But you don't understand,” Yuuri whispers, a confession uttered in silence. “I love you.”

 

 _You deserve better,_ he almost says, _you deserve the stars,_ only it comes out as, “You're too late.”

 

The next morning comes and Yuuri thinks it was all a dream and Victor smiles because it hurts, hurts, hurts.

 

\---

 

He's out of time. 

 

And Yuuri isn't there.

 

\---

 

It isn't until later, when everything is said and done and Victor wakes up with ash and debris covering his face and finds he's turned back into human form, long silver hair flowing past his shoulders. He gasps because his chest is aching, as if a weight had been put on it suddenly, and he opens his eyes.

 

Yuuri stares back at him with a stupid, dopey grin on his face and Victor wonders, not for the first time, how on Earth the boy thinks he isn't beautiful.

 

“I feel terrible,” Victor tells him. “Like there's a heavy weight on my chest.”

 

“A heart's a heavy burden,” Yuuri whispers, his hands on Victor's chest (where a heart should be, and _is_ ). 

 

They embrace, chest to beating chest, and it's a wonderful feeling. Almost like being in love.

 

Oh, wait. _It is._

**Author's Note:**

> come yell at me on [tumblr](http://neeiljosten.tumblr.com)


End file.
